


dream a little dream of me

by hanvoni



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Dreamscape AU, Gen, stan is stuck in the dream realm when he dies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 18:22:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20643617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanvoni/pseuds/hanvoni
Summary: stan is trapped in an alleyway in derry.





	dream a little dream of me

in the alleys of the derry township, the alleys that seemed slightly blurry and the alleys that shifted with size every-time he blinked, stood stan uris. his hands were shoved into his pockets as he stared at the darkened derry sky, not really spotting anything wonderful like he would usually. he hadn’t seen a bird fly through the sky or skitter through the alleyway since he got here a few days ago. he hadn’t heard any life at all, to be fair, everything in this derry was covered in a blanket of silence except for the occasional familiar sounding shouts and banter he heard from across the town— which, no, he didn’t know why someone’s voice would carry that far, but he didn’t think about it. stan couldn’t deny that he was lonely, though, but it seemed like every attempt of moving out of his spot in the alley, next to the pharmacy, with the strange mural on the wall that never stopped changing, he’d always wind up back in the same spot after a few steps. it was like walking in a circle that always ended with him being in the alley, stuck with that shifting mural. it seemed almost taunting. 

it was also unfortunate, considering he was right next to a pharmacy that he found he couldn’t get close enough to enter. he’d needed some gauze and something to wrap himself up with, though he didn’t ever remember getting himself this seriously hurt.

he looked down at his arm what he thought was his second day in this alley and found thatit was— they were, both of his arms, were nearly split into two. the first time he saw his wounds he found that they spurted with new blood that he didn’t even notice previous to this. blood that soaked his hands and his arms, contrasting a mad red against his milky white skin, he let out a scream and his lacerations seemed to scream back at him as fresh gallons poured out more and more, until it seemed impossible that this much blood was coming out of his scrawny arms and he didn’t feel like passing out— he only felt cold fear flowing through his veins. 

the blood pooled around his shoes and down the alley, his arms like life fountains that drained him of his own, and he was clearly panicking and screaming for help with a voice that wouldn’t come out of his throat. he felt like he was muted, the world was muted, and his throat was closed and his clothes were bloody, so he collapsed against the wall and held his head with his arms, his blood coating him like a lukewarm shower. he sat there, shivering, until he felt no more blood coming out of him and he knew he was dry and he couldn’t feel the red liquid engulfing his feet like he was in a kiddie pool of the stuff. and like it never happened at all, there was no blood, only the scraps of paper on the ground and posters he couldn’t read on the wall, and only dirt on his clothes. he didn’t dare look at his arms until he felt like he had to—which, embarrassingly, was a few hours later. 

it was a day later, after the boy checked his wounds for what marked the third time, he stared at them longer than his second and tried to ignore that they were spilling over with new blood all over his arms and onto his pants and shoes. he looked at them with a distant kind of apathy as he wondered why he couldn’t feel the pain they should have been bringing him. did he do this to himself? why would he? a curious part of him wanted to prod at them, dig around, push into his wounds until he was screaming and crying so that he would feel at least a semblance of  something , but instead he pushed himself off of the dirty ground and walked over to the neighboring brick wall. 

the fading mural in front of him with the paint magically ever-shifting, he felt sudden rage as he stared into the men who were put there by an artist unknown to him. his hand, which was quickly being covered in blood, clenched into a fist, and he frowned at the wall as it seemed to grin back at him with terrible intentions. it seemed like it was put there to mock him, to laugh at his pain. he lifted his arm in front of him and used the other to dip a finger in the developing blood, gathering some there and smearing a smiley face on one of the men’s faces— feeling like that wasn’t enough, he let out a scream of anger— scooping up some more of his blood and throwing it on the rest of the painting, sliding his bloody handprint across the old fashioned cars painted there with his teeth grit and his ears feeling like they were stinging with heat. he finally let out an angry scream as his fist flew towards the wall, hearing a loud crack but not feeling anything. this did nothing to soothe him, and he felt tears collect in his eyes as he brought his other fist to collide with the wall, and the other, and again, over and over, until he couldn’t clench his fists anymore and he could only throw bloodied hands against the wall with dull thumps, and he knew he should have felt something, fucking  anything , but he didn’t, and it fucking killed him inside. when the sun eventually set, whoever knows how long later, he was still standing in the same spot, leaned against the mural, crying. he hadn’t noticed that his blood had disappeared from the wall a long time ago. 

it wasn’t until what felt like weeks of being alone but was probably only a few days that stan heard the voices in the distance again. he was sitting on a dirty crate mumbling to himself when he heard the shout of a way too familiar sounding voice, and it sounded even closer than the voices usually were. the voice was that of a kid’s, maybe even a kid his age, and it belonged to a boy. the closeness of this wandering voice, saying things of which he couldn’t make out for some reason, tugged on his heart as it begged him to try and  run towards it, please, we need someone, were so lonely, and he found himself standing up against better judgement as he craned his head slightly. 

“can you believe it? it looks just like we remember, huh?” the voice rang out. it pained stan that he couldn’t remember who it belonged to. 

“yeah, it’s fucking insane,” a second, smaller, voice said. he could swear they were just right there, about to walk past the alley, dear god, please let me see you—

“come on eds, you’re so fucking slow!” eds? eds? he felt like he’d just been shot in the heart, he felt everything stop as his brain tried to register everything; that was richie tozier’s voice, the trashmouth, his friend, somebody. and he was talking to eds— eddie, eddie kaspbrak. his heart, which previously felt like it stopped momentarily, started up again in big, body trembling knocks (BA-BUM-BA-BUM), and he felt every nerve alight and a smile form on his face— except it didn’t, because he couldn’t explain why but he felt like the fear of god was struck into his body, and he wanted to hide and never come out, and he didn’t want to see richie tozier or eddie kaspbrak or anyone else and he looked down and saw that his hands were blurred around the edges and he watched as pieces of himself fell off like leaves, and he gasped in quiet horror as he looked down at himself, and he saw that the only clear part of him was the blood spilling out onto the cement. fuck, god, no— “oh, look, eds, the pharmacy! you think greta’s there?”—no, no no no. he didn’t want richie or eddie to see his scars and his blood and, oh god, he’s disappearing, what the fuck—“shut the fuck up.”

and suddenly, like a heavenly apparition. light brown hair. thick rimmed glasses kept together with tape. an open button up. khaki shorts. a bruised hand holding someone else’s. bitten down fingernails. nervous, excited tics. 

stan felt himself stumbling back into the alley, suddenly wanting to sink into the wall, breathing shallow, hoping that richie hadn’t seen him, feeling his form glitch in a dreamlike— nightmare-like way, shrinking into himself and looking away from where richie stood.

he heard their shoes scrape the pavement as they passed the alley. and the ring of a bell as they entered the pharmacy. 

stan didn’t realize he had started crying. 

he could still hear them from inside, and he didn’t know why. he can’t explain anything that has been happening anymore. 

“there’s nothing here.”

“don’t worry eds! just dream up some gauze and pills for us, eh, doctor?”

dream?

“fuck you, richie.”

a laugh. a bell, again. 

stan found himself walking towards the end of the alley, towards the sound. maybe, maybe if he could just walk out of here, maybe he could—

richie tozier stepped back into the entrance, with eddie trailing behind him, and eddie let out a terrifying screech as he looked into the alleyway at the bloody stan uris, looking like an accidental ink-spot standing out on blank white paper, an error on a computer screen. he looked wrong— almost greyscale, with his ruby red blood all over him as an exception, looking scared, frayed at the edges, almost like he was delicately being chipped away at or erased. eddie brought his hand to his mouth as he stared at stanley, and richie dropped eddie’s free hand to also gape at the boy in the alley. they both looked so scared at first, their eyes searching every part of stan that was available to see, until their expressions turned soft and sad and he saw that eddie was crying instead of backing away in horror.

his voice was high and raw when he squeaked out, “stan.“

eddie, with his brown hair glowing with the midday summer, with his light yellow angry car shirt like stan remembered so vividly, with his black fanny pack strapped around his waist that hinted of pills and an inhaler that eddie needed to stay at tip top shape. his freckles that painted his face, his fluttering eyelashes, his tears. 

they both looked at him and stan didn’t like how they did. 

he found that, again, he couldn’t speak. he felt his heart thumping loudly in his chest, he felt his limbs frozen with fear, and he didn’t know why. “don’t look at me,” he tried to say, but he couldn’t get it out. he could only feel hot tears run down his cheeks as he tried to open his mouth to speak, snapping it shut when he realized he couldn’t say anything. 

“stan the fucking man!” and suddenly, without warning, a red-faced, teary richie tozier was stan-bound, arms spread wide in search of a hug. but instead of being greeted with stan’s body pressed against his, his skinny arms wrapping around stan, not minding the blood staining him, he found that stan had disappeared, his arms wrapping around nothing as he stumbled into the empty alley. 

that’s when both richie and eddie woke up in their own beds, fatigued and 40 years old, somewhere in derry, maine. 

when stan woke up, he was back in the alley, not realizing he had been crying before he even came to, residual fear still running through his limbs from seeing his friends. 

what happened?

he looked up and saw the mural, and the alley, and the trash on the ground, but no richie and no eddie.

he brought his knees to his chest, and he cried. 


End file.
